December 10, 2011

Where can you find burlesque, neon and robots? Easy: Yelp's Holiday Bazaar at downtown Vegas's creative collective Emergency Arts, the go-to spot for artists, creative-types, and tech entrerepenuers and where Vegas yelpers enjoyed an evening of local shopping and unexpected treats. Guy C sums it up nicely, "After a while it felt like you were just going deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of increasingly cool things. Every room yielded a new surprise, an impressive piece of work, a really great person. The event was funny, and interesting, and it had a cool vibe, and great music."

Local coffee shop The Beat served up Peppermint Hot Chocolate, Mulled Spiced Red Wine, Monkey Bread and Homemade Pumpkin Soup, while yelpers perused a bevvy of offerings from local shops, artisans, tech geeks and museums! Emergency Arts galleries Kleven Contemporary, Gamma Gamma, Action Red, Found, Lil' Art Bodega and Get Up opened their doors, and volunteers from The Burlesque Hall of Fame, the Neon Museum and the Smith Center For Performing Arts were on hand to educate a little!

For all the fashionistas, Dee Rubio, Jessica Galindo Leather Couture, Makeshift Apparel, Phatcake Hats, Owl Posse and Slidin' Thru Swag set up shop, and The Fragrance Factorymixed up custom scents all night long. Dog lovers were treated to Pits N Weiners creations, and even the cyclists found friends at the Fremont Bike Clinic. When it was time to take a break, storyteller Aaron Glassman from Storyteller Gigs had a story to share.

And move over Silicon Valley, the Vegas tech scene was in the holiday spirit too. /usr/lib, a brand new library, informal coworking space, and venue for technically minded people and entrepreneurial folk opened its doors for Romotive to showcase their simple and affordable robotic platforms that interact with people in meaningful ways. And, Vegas-based app Rumgr kept everyone in the know with a visual marketplace of items for sale!

A special thanks to Alex Mo Photography for capturing the evening and to PBTH for shooting some fun holiday portraits. DJ Ladyfingers kept us in the mood with festive tunes too! View all the pictures on our handy-dandy Flickr. For a full list of vendors, peep the event listing here. And to read the 5-star reviews, head to Yelp.